Episode 57: Running on Plants with Tom Pickering

Plant-Based Canada Podcast

Welcome to the Plant-Based Canada Podcast. In this episode we are joined by the award-winning filmmaker and director Tom Pickering to chat about his upcoming documentary called “I Could Never Go Vegan” and initiative this June called “Running on Plants”.

Tom Pickering is a filmmaker and long-time vegan based in the UK. In his words, he was raised on a diet of genre cinema, and from a young age wanted nothing more than to work in the film industry. A decade after graduating film at university, Tom had a number of successful corporate and narrative films under his belt, collecting a string of awards and establishing himself as a director, eventually founding his production company Lock the Tent Productions.

But something was missing.

Tom’s parents raised him as a vegetarian, and later in life after discovering horrors of the egg and dairy industries, Tom turned vegan. At some point it dawned on Tom that these two huge passions he had in filmmaking and veganism could be combined, and that he could start telling stories that had the power to change lives.

This is where the idea to bring the feature documentary “I Could Never Go Vegan” to the big screen was born. With the help of his brother, Tom set out to capture the various arguments that face the vegan movement and find whether these are justified or not.

A lifelong runner, Tom has also recently launched the new health and fitness campaign called “Running On Plants”, which enables participants to take control of their health by adopting a whole food plant-based diet for the month of June and taking up running. Tom is happily married (listen to this episode and you will know that this is of particular note ;), and when not working he’ll usually be with his wife and cocker spaniel, Chan, out on the trails.

In this episode we discuss:

• Creating documentaries
• I Could Never Go Vegan Documentary
• Running on Plants Initiative

Episode Resources:

Nutrients 2019 Article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30634559/
NURMI Study :https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35277039/
Strava: https://www.strava.com/
Switch4Good: https://switch4good.org/plant-based-nutrition-for-athletes/
The Happy Pear: https://thehappypear.ie/about/
Plant-Based Health Professionals UK: https://plantbasedhealthprofessionals.com/

Tom Pickering´s Socials
Documentary Website: https://icouldnevergovegan.co.uk/
Instagram: @thetommypick

Running On Plants
Website: https://runningonplants.org/
Instagram: @runningonplants1
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/runningonplantspage/

Plant-Based Canada’s Socials
Instagram (@plantbasedcanadaorg)
Facebook (Plant-Based Canada, https://m.facebook.com/plantbasedcanadaorg/)
Website (https://www.plantbasedcanada.org/)

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This episode was hosted by Stephanie Nishi RD, PhD.

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